Category Archives: Company Blog

This First-of-Its-Kind Integration for the Automotive Industry Will Optimize Online Business Listings, Increase Four and Five Star Review Ratings, and Improve the Consumer Review Experience for Auto Dealerships

SCOTTSDALE, AZ-(January 23, 2015) – Digital Air Strike, the automotive social media and digital engagement company, today announced another new partnership with a leading online social network for local business owners, MerchantCircle, a division of Reply! Inc.

This integration is available exclusively through Digital Air Strike’s Review Surge solution, which automatically generates a survey after a customer buys or services a vehicle at a dealership. After the consumer finishes the brief survey they can indicate if they want to share the review on MerchantCircle. From there, Review Surge automatically populates the dealership’s listing with the customer review on MerchantCircle.com.

“We are excited about the positive impact the partnership with Digital Air Strike will have on local auto dealerships on our platform,” said Pablo Carrega, General Manager, of MerchantCircle. “We have a shared mission to empower small businesses with the vital marketing tools to boost their online reputation and visibility.”

For auto dealerships, this integration not only increases the number and frequency of reviews on MerchantCircle, but it also provides a more accurate and robust view of the dealership customers’ purchase or service experience. This increase of reviews on MerchantCircle will increase the dealership’s visibility on search engines. In addition to the review propagation, Digital Air Strike dealerships will have “enhanced” listings on MerchantCircle that block competitor ads on their listings.

For car buyers and owners, this integration provides a simple way to share their experiences through a brief, automated survey. The increased volume of peer reviews and context provided through these surveys gives the consumer a more accurate view of the dealership with which they are considering doing business.

MerchantCircle is the third major partnership like this for dealerships who work with Digital Air Strike. Digital Air Strike dealerships already benefit from similar integrations with leading auto review sites Cars.com and Edmunds.com.

“We have already benefitted from Digital Air Strike’s existing partnerships with Cars.com and Edmunds.com and are looking forward to the addition of MerchantCircle. The more sites we can get reviews on from our customers, the more customers we have coming into our showroom and service bay,” said Brad Mugg, General Manager, Conant Automotive Group.”

Using Twitter’s new “Share via Direct Message” feature, your business can easily include customer Tweets when following up on past inquiries or issues.

Since Twitter started, it has been one of the most open sites in terms of social conversation with updates that are available to anyone, not just friends or followers. Although this new messaging option wasn’t in huge demand amongst Twitter users for this reason, it will allow the site to move further into the growing trend of mobile messaging.

Aside from giving users a way to transition from an open dialogue to a private conversation, this update can greatly impact the way that your business communicates with customers.

Currently, Facebook does not allow companies to directly contact customers without the customer initiating the private conversation. By using Twitter creatively and attentively, you can have an significant impact on your online relationships.

The lifespan of the average Tweet doesn’t extend past 24 hours, leading to a shorter attention span from its users. If you respond privately to a customer or potential customer even a couple days after their initial Tweet was sent, some context will be needed to jog their memory. Taking the time to explain why you’re reaching out could lead to more missed and forgotten conversations.

By including their original comment when responding to a customer, you can shave off minutes from your response time, which is valuable on a site that’s all about what’s happening now. Having their own words within the conversation also allows your customer to more easily return to the frame of mind they were in when they wrote their original update.

This new messaging feature also opens up the possibility of building more long-lasting relationships with your fans. The person that casually told you they wanted to look for a new car “in a few months” can now be easily reminded of your dealership. The fact that you remembered them weeks or months later will do even more to show that your business cares about customer relationships.

Since partnering with Digital Air Strike, Barlow Buick GMC Used Car Manager, Dave Barlow, has seen an overall boost in activity on third-party review sites, as well as an increase in Facebook engagement.

More importantly, they have also seen a tremendous increase in positive reviews. In only nine months, Barlow Buick GMC has gained 267 new reviews with an average 4.8-star rating!

With Digital Air Strike, you can rest easy knowing our expert social media and reputation management team has your needs covered.

When a recent fire swept through the Sierra Nevada mountains, John L. Sullivan Chevrolet decided to give back to their local community, donating and delivering 7,500 bottles of Gatorade to firefighters.

Using social media, the dealership shared photos of their team loading the delivery truck, while spreading the word about the fire and inspiring others in the community to help. With some well-targeted ads, these posts on the dealership’s Facebook page gained an astounding 1,040 total post actions (including Likes, Shares, Comments, etc.) and over 13,000 people reached!

Edmunds.com eventually caught wind of the story, penning an article about the charity of owner, John Sullivan, as well as the power of social media. To end the article: “Edmunds says: A thoughtful gesture gets a lot of mileage for a community-minded dealership, thanks to social media.”

During this session, two industry leaders will discuss their top tips to running a successful social media advertising campaign, including how to use new tools to target in-market car buyers and how to generate solid leads with a smaller ad spend.

It may have been Oxford Dictionaries’ “word of the year” in 2013, but this year, Cars.com is using selfies to increase social engagement among dealers and customers, connecting them in an interactive way.

This summer, Cars.com began promoting their #NewCarFace campaign and contest. Although car-buyers are the main focus of the contest, there are many ways that your dealership can leverage this promotion to connect with customers after they’ve purchased their new car and build relationships that will last much longer than one sales visit.

The concept is simple:

Snap a photo to show off your best #NewCarFace.

Come up with a catchy caption. Don’t forget to use the hashtag!

Share your photo on Instagram or Twitter and mention @carsdotcom.

If you don’t have Twitter or Instagram, you can share your photo on Cars.com’s Facebook page. Just make sure to include #NewCarFace somewhere in your post.

In January, Cars.com will announce one winner and pay off their car loan up to $25,000. All recent new/used car buyers have a chance to win – possibly even someone who purchased from your dealership!

What does this mean for you?

The best time to get your customers to connect with your business on social media is before they have driven off the lot.

The most exciting moment of buying a new car is when the salesperson hands over the keys. With the #NewCarFace promotion, you can encourage your customers to share that exact moment with their friends and family while they are still at your dealership. As they are tagging @carsdotcom and showing off their new car, let them know that your dealership is on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook, too.

Don’t let that initial “like” on Facebook be the end of the conversation. Continue to engage and build a relationship that will keep them coming back to do business with you for both your customer service excellence and your desire to connect beyond just a business transaction.

In addition to the positive social buzz your dealership will gain from having your satisfied customers promoting your business online, Cars.com will select one dealership each month to be the Cars.com #NewCarFace Featured Store. The winning store each month will be highlighted on the national Cars.com Facebook page, allowing your team and satisfied customers to be featured.

Visit the Cars.com #NewCarFace website for additional information, as well as rules and restrictions.

Is your dealership doing everything it can to turn internet leads into sales?

Our studies have shown that internet shoppers who receive a response within 10 minutes are 3x more likely to visit the dealership. Responding to a customer right away is just one of the best practice tips for beating out your competition.

Listen to our “10 Lead Response Best Practices” recorded webinar featuring Scott Kusayanagi, Director of Client Experience at Digital Air Strike, to learn more of our expert advice for responding to leads more effectively.

Prior to joining Digital Air Strike, Scott Kusayanagi worked in the automotive industry for 14 years in multiple Management roles including Finance Manager, Finance Director, and General Sales Manager.

In addition, while Scott was the General Sales Manager of his Toyota dealership, he extensively built out the store’s Internet Department from the ground up using the Response Logix, Smart Quote & Smart Follow products.

After revoking the option for businesses to send event invites to all of their fans, Facebook is rolling out three new tools to improve the event experience for both businesses and users.

Desktop and Mobile News Feed Ads

In the coming weeks, Pages will begin to see the option to create desktop and mobile News Feed ads that “boost awareness of events and drive responses.” Previously, these types of ads were only shown in the right-hand column on desktop only.

Event Insights

Event hosts will now be able to view insights in the right-hand column of an event page, which will include information about the number of people who have seen a link to the event, the number of people who have viewed the event, and the number of joins, saves and maybes the event has received.

According to Facebook, “These insights represent the first step [Facebook is] taking to help Pages better understand what’s working and not working when promoting their events.”

Events for Users

Facebook will also be making new improvements to the event experience for users. Each user’s events page has a new look to better highlight upcoming events and showcase new events, including suggested events based on information such as the pages they like, their location and the day of the week. This is another way that your event can gain visibility amongst your customers.

Last week, Facebook launched cross-device reporting for Facebook ads, which will enable Facebook advertisers to see how people are moving between devices before they convert.

This tool is becoming increasingly important as customers become multiple-screen users, who can, within the span of a day, view your business’ ad on their mobile device, tablet or desktop computer.

If someone sees an ad for a lease special at your dealership on their phone, odds are they aren’t going to immediately visit your website and schedule an appointment on their mobile device. Using this new tool, you will be able to see on which device customers saw your ad v. which device they were using at the point of conversion.

This data can help your business better understand how your customers shop for cars on their various devices. If users are consistently viewing your ads via mobile and converting later on their desktop, this can give you insight into how to better target your ads.

With Facebook’s organic reach in decline and Twitter’s content brevity, Tumblr is seeing a strong increase in brands moving to the site.

Tumblr is caught somewhere in the middle of Facebook and Twitter in terms of content, however content on Tumblr is seen long after tweets and Facebook posts become irrelevant.

While Twitter will gain more attention than Tumblr when an event is happening live, during the days that follow, content will continue to be circulated on Tumblr and will fade out of the Twitter spotlight.

In addition, in the last 6 months, Tumblr active usage has increased by 22 percent while Twitter and Facebook’s active usage decreased by three percent and six percent, respectively.

In a recent post on how automotive brands use Tumblr, the site said that “the automotive conversation on Tumblr is one of the largest and richest on the network, with 1.8M people participating every month.” In addition, auto manufacturers can also use the site to determine which trends and topics are being searched by their specific brand audience. For example, according to Tumblr’s data, Jeep and Mazda have audiences that are interested in off-roading and motorsports, while Lincoln and Cadillac appeal to a more “aesthetically-driven crowd.”

With automotive manufacturers moving their content to Tumblr, dealerships may benefit from increasing their presence on the blogging site.